Ever since reading Adam Federman's cover story on natural gas drilling in the Northeast (Spring 2010), I've been mildly obsessed with natural gas, particularly shale gas, which is reached via a controversial drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing. Hydraulic facturing, "fracking" for short, has been around for decades, but when combined with new horizontal drilling techniques, it's suddenly made shale gas financially viable. There's a ton of shale gas in the U.S. (or several trillion cubic feet to be exact), and the fact that we can now get to it has driven the price of… more

About three weeks ago, environmental groups who had been doing a decent job of raising awareness about Prop 23 -- the California proposition intended to stall implementation of carbon regulation (which was passed as AB32 years ago) -- seemed to collectively realize that they'd somehow missed an equally dangerous, but much quieter threat: Prop 26.

While Prop 23 would halt implementation of AB32 until the economy improves, Prop 26 would create all kinds of ways to mire climate legislation in bureaucratic red tape should the team behind Prop 23 fail. Aiming to save corporations… more

Few groups do activism as well or as effectively these days as the folks behind 350.org. By galvanizing the movement to regulate carbon around a single, symbolic number -- 350 (most scientists not working for oil companies believe in order to stabilize climate change we need to reach a concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere that's no more than 350 parts-per-million) -- the group managed to not only present a strong and unified front at the global climate summit in Copenhagen, but also to turn scientific abstraction into a symbol for action.

Carbon Disclosure Project releases Global 500 report

It’s funny that while Republicans seem to want to fight any sort of carbon legislation, corporations are seeing CO2 reductions as a good business move. Perhaps in the case of carbon, laissez-faire capitalism might actually work. The only problem with that strategy, of course, is the fact that we’re running out of time and market adjustments, as we’ve been learning economy-wide over the past few years, don’t exactly deliver speedy or painless results.

Nonetheless, it is heartening to hear companies like Siemens, Samsung, and Bayer describe carbon management as "a strategic business priority and competitive driver." The three were among 500 companies who reported… more

People whose income level limits their access to clean air and water, or puts them at greater risk of illness, death, or unemployment in the event of an environmental disaster are being denied the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness guaranteed to all Americans by the Constitution. And someone should be held accountable for it. That simple fact has been the foundation of the environmental justice movement for the last few decades. But while the movement has grown, and the swelling ranks of environmental lawyers have managed to try, and win, a… more